Nišan (Manchu Nišan saman; in some manuscripts the heroine is called Teteke) is the shamaness at the centre of the Nišan saman-i bithe, 'The Book of the Nišan Shaman' - the best-known work of Manchu literature and the fullest narrative of Manchu shamanic practice. A young widow living with her mother-in-law, she is summoned when the only son of the rich man Baldu Bayan dies; drumming herself into trance she crosses to the land of the dead, outwits the underworld king Ilmun Han and his servant Monggoldai Nakcu, learns from the divine grandmother Omosi-mama that she had been ordained to her calling, and bears the boy's soul back to restore him to life. The tale survives in several Manchu manuscripts recorded from oral tradition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with versions also among the Daur, Evenk and Nanai. Classified as a mortal (a human shamaness) rather than a deity.